~ The Rev'd Robert Hendrickson

On Many and More Controversies: Of Justice, LGBT Christians, Female Priests, and Communion Regardless of Baptism

As I talk with people supportive of Communion Regardless of Baptism (CRB), I have heard a notion offered more than once. They say that the arguments for CRB are the same as those for ordaining women or LGBT people. More precisely, they say that the arguments against changing the canons are the same as the arguments offered against ordaining women and LGBT people. Appealing to Scripture and Tradition sounds, to them, like the same appeals that were used to deny the inclusion of these individuals in ordained ministry.

I would say that these are entirely different questions. Christ Church, New Haven has a long history being supportive of the inclusion of women and LGBT individuals in the life of the Church. Long before it was a popular cause in the Church, Christ Church was supporting women for ordination and created a welcoming and safe space for gays and lesbians.

A parishioner wrote to me of his early time here,

“I remember as a young adult, when the Gay Christian Readings Group started, the genuine thrill of thinking that God loved gay people for being gay and seeing a significant number of significant parishioners at Christ Church who believed this, too. This was felt by most of us to be a radical proclamation…one we would make with the defensive shield of extreme forms of ancient tradition all around us. We simply wanted to be counted as valued children of God, worthy of full recognition and acceptance by the Church.”

Christ Church has long offered a place that counted all people as being the valued children of God. That place has evolved into a space of, to use a term, apolitical inclusion. We welcome all and make it known that they have a place here. There are no rainbow flags and few sermons that reference the issue and yet we make plain, by our life together, that LGBT individuals and all others are welcome to find a home here.

That sense of welcome is grounded in our understanding of our Sacramental life together.

As we welcome people into the redeeming work of Christ and make them part of the Body we make known that, in our mind, the love of God for His children is unbounded and unmerited. We accept that love at the font (as do the many adults we baptize and put forward for confirmation) and we are renewed in that love at the Altar.

All people are worthy of respect and are to be welcomed at the Font. In our Catechism, we proclaim, “The divine Son became human, so that in him human beings might be adopted as children of God, and be made heirs of God’s kingdom.” All are welcomed to this immense promise as “We share in his victory when we are baptized into the New Covenant and become living members of Christ.”

The Holy Spirit, moving upon all of Creation, welcomes us into the life of Baptism. The Catechism states, “We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.” The presence of the Holy Spirit is revealed in the work of confessing life and hope in Christ Jesus. As we welcome all to Baptism, we make known the continued movement of the Spirit among us.

That welcome is a welcome to the risen life. It is not simply a welcome to fellowship, coffee hour, or to our own worthy company. It is a welcome to live and die in the Lord. That new life is accomplished in the baptismal life. Baptism is a sure and certain means by which grace is received. Moreover, it is commanded of us as one of the two Christ-given Sacraments. Baptism and Eucharist are at the heart of what it means to be the Church.

The Catechism says of Baptism that it is the “sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” We become the part of the Church as we are baptized and are made partakers of the Kingdom – a Kingdom foreshadowed in the Eucharist.

The Catechism states, “Baptism is union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit.” When we baptize adults or children they are welcomed as Christ’s own forever and “share citizenship in the Covenant, membership in Christ, and redemption by God.”

Baptism, for the Church, is not optional. It binds us to Christ and Christ to us. We become heirs to the Kingdom through the water and blood as we die and rise again to newness of life.

At Christ Church, we welcome all to this life – we encourage all to make that commitment to live anew in the promise of the Risen Lord. There is no welcome more radical and no hospitality more warm than to invite those that visit to membership in Christ.

The Eucharist is how the Body comes together – how we are continually re-formed as citizens of the Kingdom. The Catechism states, “The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.”

It is not a meal of hospitality. It is not simply a chance for us to be welcoming. It is when we enter the remembrance of life, death, and resurrection – when we receive the Body and Blood.

Those who would see this issue as a justice issue or as an issue of inclusion have the issues half-right. It is an issue of inclusion – inclusion into the Body of Christ by Baptism. It is not a justice issue, as I have heard it said.

There is no injustice in asking those who have not been given the sure and certain hope of Baptism to wait before coming to the Altar.

There is no injustice in believing, as the earliest Christian communities did and as the Church throughout the ages has, that Baptism marks the beginning of life in Christ.

There is no injustice in holding onto the hope that by Baptism we are given new life and that this new life is worth sharing with all who come into our churches.

There is no injustice in believing that Baptism is the mark of ministry in the Church and that it changes our being and forms us for service in Christ.

There is no injustice in taking seriously the mystery of the Body and Blood – and that we believe “welcoming” someone to the Altar rail is not our invitation alone but is the Church’s across centuries and traditions.

There is no injustice in holding onto the belief that to share in Christ’s Body and Blood, the resurrection encounter, the sacrifice, the breaking and sharing, the pledge of redemption, the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, and the strengthening of our Union with Christ (as the Prayer Book states) requires some sort of union to strengthen.

When LGBT people and women were (and are) struggling to be recognized as “ordainable” that dignity was not just a matter of secular humanist musings. It was recognized because those very people were baptized into the mysteries of faith. They had been welcomed into the household of God, were inheritors of the Kingdom, and made part of the royal priesthood of all believers.

It was more than a justice issue – it was an issue of fundamental dignity in Christ and about who and how the baptized are marked for service to Christ. They were called to bear the Sacraments because they were marked by them.

There is no justice issue with CRB. There is no right to Communion. The language of rights and justice has so pervaded and upended the Church that we can no longer speak of responsibility – of our responsibility to baptize for example – we only speak in terms of rights. The sad fact is that the more we rely on rights language to the exclusion of responsibility language we will never have a true identity as the Body for we will have committed ourselves to one form of zero-sum antagonism or another as we claim our rights.

The Church is a responsibility. It is a weight. It is a call. We are made the Church and welcomed to the life of the cross by Baptism. All must be welcomed to our churches but all should leave transformed – there can be no casual encounter with Christ. Baptism establishes, in sure and certain fashion, that we are members of one another – not just “welcomed” but made one with one another in Christ Jesus. No “radical hospitality” or “Open Table” can do more than this – more than Christ offers at the font.

It is that sense of mutual obligation/reciprocity/membership/identity that has made Christ Church, historically, a voice for those without voice in the Church. Our sense that we can really do nothing other than protect their dignity for it is Christ’s dignity and ours. Baptism is not about being welcomed. It is about being.

The casual nature of CRB is what is most frightening. That we may decide that people are not worth baptizing. That Communion is not worth the wait. That the Body is not worth building and upholding. That the souls of those who come to us are not really worth our time – because they are just fine without Christ.

Christ Church has a long and determined history of reaching out to the poor of the city, of welcoming the marginalized, and of bringing many to Christ. We have a long history of justice work. That conviction and mission grows out of one place – our firm belief that the Sacramental life is worth sharing and that the men and women who come into this place are not just to be “welcomed” they are to be baptized – to become one with us in Christ Jesus.

14 thoughts on “On Many and More Controversies: Of Justice, LGBT Christians, Female Priests, and Communion Regardless of Baptism”

Well said Robert+. Inclusion of LGBT Christians and ordination of women has to do with how the Body of Christ includes factors of gender and orientation which are not matters of decision but ontology. CRB is not about excluding someone based upon factors beyond one’s control. This is about something over which we do have some control … that is whether or not we accept the free gift of God’s grace in Baptism.

There’s a story about Martin Luther I’ve heard a few times now, and here it’s told by Thomas Manton: “Luther saith of himself, that when the devil tempted him to despair, or to any doubts and fears about the love of God or his mercy to sinners, he would always answer, Ecce, ego baptizatus sum, et credo in Christum crucifixum: ‘Behold, I am baptized, and believe in Christ crucified’.”

Thank you for this. As a priest who happens to be gay and female, and as one who is also opposed to CWOB on theological grounds, I have long been frustrated by the pro-CWOB folks equating justice and inclusion for LGBT’s with the practice of inviting unbaptized persons to communion. As you have so eloquently stated, this is not the same thing at all, and I appreciate you giving some real theological weight to this argument.

I did not realize that there was an argument being made for CWOB on the basis of “justice.” I had always been taught that no one really has a right to the Sacraments per se – that there are always conditions to be satisfied. We don’t baptize those who don’t want or intend to lead a Christian life, we don’t absolve the non-repentent, and so on. Now, it would seem, the Sacraments are just there for the taking, and the Church has no responsibility to demand that anybody fulfill any requirement. But I bet I can predict at what point the new Sacrament-on-demand scheme will stop: ordination.

Thank you, Robert, for this wonderful post. I will have to say “ditto” to the remarks by vicarofpontiac above. I was also happy to read what you said about Christ Church, New Haven. A large part of who I am as a gay Christian Anglo-Catholic priest was formed at Christ Church. Have a Happy and Blessed Easter.

From my point of view, and as somebody who’d been outside the church for almost 35+ years, “inclusive” was simply a code word, meaning: “if you’re GLBT, you won’t be physically ejected or beaten up here.” That’s it – and that was, in fact, very important at the time. But it only means something if you want to go to church – which only happens if you are a seeker in faith. So the argument makes no sense at base, really.

As somebody who spent most of her life outside the church, I can emphatically say I had no desire whatsoever to be “included” in it, no matter how many lovely invitations might have come my way! (I’m sure this is different for LGBT people who wanted to be there – but then there’s that desire for faith as the first principle, again.)

I came to the church for what it teaches about faith, pure and simple. I can belong to numerous other organizations that will “include” me – but none of them will help me to live through faith.

Actually, I don’t see that women’s ordination, ssm, or partnered gay clergy are are exactly justice issues either. Women’s ordination is required by society’s recognition that women can and want to do pretty much any job a man can do, although the old disjunction between what society thought women are capable of and what they’re actually capable of might amount to a justice issue.

The glbt issues are much more tied up with the call to holy living, although social acceptance is a secondary factor.

Purely out of curiosity, Fr. Hendrickson what do you think about the Orthodox approach to communion wherein only the Orthodox can receive the Eucharist, howevever anyone can have some of the blessed bread? This always struck me as an approach that preserves the integrity of communion, while still extending the hand of fellowship out to all. Just a thought… (As an aside, I was listening to an N.T. Wright video wherein he distinguished the Roman Catholic and Anglican approaches to communion by noting that the Eucharist is part of the healing/salvation process in the latter and not something one gets for being in a “state of grace”-something I truly love about the Anglican path). A Blessed Easter to you!

Father Hendrickson, purely out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the Orthodox practice of communion wherein only the Orthodox may receive communion but all may have some of the blessed bread? This spproach always has seemed to me to preserve the integrity of the Eucharist while still extending the hand of fellowship very wide. Just a thought. As an aside I was watching an N.T. Wright video the other day where he distinguished the Roman Catholic and Anglican appproaches to the Eucharist by emphasizing that in the latter communion is part of the healing process of salvation and not something one gets when they were in a proper state of grace-I thought it was a powerful point. A Blessed Easter to you!

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